When you understand the emotions driving clients to buy, you can craft your brand story and sales funnels to trigger those emotions, move prospects to action faster, and increase your website conversion rate.

My husband always teases me, saying that I’m a point-of-purchase marketers dream because I’ll stick anything in my shopping cart if it tugs on my emotions or reminds me of happy times or fond childhood memories.

Over the years, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on toys, candies, foods, and even clothes for my kids because they represent something I loved, thought was cool, or always wanted when I was a kid. It’s why I introduced my kids to movies like Goonies, Princess Bride, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, and cartoons like Duck Tales, Tailspin, Rescue Rangers, Gummy Bears, and Fraggle Rock. It’s why I buy superhero t-shirts, wall mount lightsabers, and more Legos than any one family should ever own.

People make decisions, especially buying decisions, with their heart. Their decision to make a purchase or invest in something is tied to how it makes them feel or how they believe it will make them feel. They then justify the buying decision with their brain, identifying features, facts, and logic to back up their decision and affirm it was a good one.

More simply put:

People buy with their heart and justify the purchase with their head

People buy with emotions and justify the purchase with logic

Understanding Emotional Brand Triggers

At the very first marketing conference I attended, I discovered an incredibly valuable tool that has helped me to not only identify the emotional brand triggers for my brands, but help my clients identify the emotions that drive their customers to buy. It’s a list of 50 emotional reasons people buy from the book Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson.

When you understand the emotions driving your ideal clients to buy, you’ll be able to craft the narrative of your brand, story, and sales funnels to trigger those emotions, move your prospects to action faster, and increase your website conversion rates.

Here’s the list of 50 reasons why people buy:

To make more money

To save time

To become more comfortable

To become more fit and healthy

To attract praise

To attract the opposite sex

To increase enjoyment

To protect their family

To possess things of beauty

To emulate others

To avoid criticism

To protect their reputation

To make work easier

To feel superior

To speed up work

To be trendy

To keep up with the Joneses

To look younger

To preserve the environment

To become more efficient

To satisfy an impulse

To buy friendship

To save money

To avoid effort

To be cleaner

To escape or avoid pain

To be popular

To protect their possessions

To gratify curiosity

To be in style

To satisfy their appetite

To avoid trouble

To be an individual

To access opportunities

To escape stress

To express love

To gain confidence

To be entertained

To be informed

To be organized

To give to others

To feel safe

To feel younger

To conserve energy

To pursue a hobby

To be accepted

To leave a legacy

To be excited

To feel opulent/affluent

To communicate better

Leveraging Emotional Brand Triggers

If you’ve been in business for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve heard things like:

Speak right to your ideal client

Use targeted marketing messages

Successful marketing matches the right person with the right message at the right time

Communicate the emotional benefits over the logical features

To deliver the right message at the right time, you need total clarity about two things:

What they want most: The reason they will take action and what motivates them

The associated emotions: What they need to hear, feel, and experience

Only then can you create sales and marketing content that will create a connection, form a relationship, trigger emotions, and persuade action.

Emotions Matter:

According to Psychology Today, fMRI neuro-imagery shows that consumers use emotions rather than information to evaluate a brand.

A 2016 Nielson report states that emotions are at the heart of the relationship consumers have with brands, influencing conscious decisions and driving non-conscious decisions, and that more often than not, consumers base their decisions on less-than-rational considerations like instinct, gut-feel, fit, and impulse. The same study showed ads with the best emotional response scores were associated with a 23% lift in sales volume over what an average ad would generate, while ads with below-average emotional response scores were associated with a 16% decline in sales volume.

Another study proved that successful advertising campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content, and a little better (31% vs 26%) those that mixed emotional and rational content.

A brand’s long-term success depends on the personal, emotional connection it makes with its audience because the emotions associated with the brand are what will drive repeat purchases, referrals, and social shares over time.

Every piece of marketing content you create, every website you design, every sales page you create should be designed to influence the audience, invoke specific feelings, and influence decisions. Whether you want to make them angry, get them excited, make them sad, encourage them to persevere, increase confidence, inspire change, or create any other emotion, the better you are at tapping into their emotions, the more successful your marketing campaigns and website calls to action will be.

When people hear information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

Typography:

Just as colors have meaning, typefaces have meaning. Sans serif typefaces are seen as modern, corporate, innovative, forward-thinking, advanced, while serif typefaces feel classic, traditional, established, historic, and trustworthy.

Design:

Whether the design is clean and simple, flat and modern, cute and whimsical, or layered with lots of drop shadows, every choice you make in the design of a website or marketing piece creates emotion and meaning and every element can either cause distraction or move a prospect toward a buying decision.

The Bottom Line

When you understand the motivations behind why clients buy and the emotions attached to those motivations, you will have the power to create powerful marketing messages, emotional brand stories, targeted sales and advertising campaigns, and compelling sales funnels that attract ideal clients like crazy, compel them to take action, and skyrocket your website conversion rates.

Some links used on this site are “affiliate links.” If you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

About Jennifer Bourn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative, a full service design and development company specializing in WordPress. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, blogs about food and travel at Inspired Imperfection, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento, and writes often for other websites on freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding.

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